


Blood muster

by Kes



Series: Thor 2 Rewritten: The Shaded Tree [11]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Asgard, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-15
Updated: 2014-10-15
Packaged: 2018-02-21 07:38:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2460227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kes/pseuds/Kes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fire has stopped, but the dust and the blood still lie thick in Asgard's halls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood muster

Jane sits inside Frigga’s closet, hands braced against the door, teeth clamped together, resisting the urge to either scream or leave. The Aether inside her _wants_ , and the man she can hear casting around outside wants it with an equal intensity. This she knows, though not how. In the sudden quiet after the fight, even her breathing seems too loud. He will find her. Sooner or later, he will find her.

Pain slices, jagged-edged, through her body – she is clutching her face, for all it is smooth and unhurt – the Aether subsides to a dull, resentful throbbing. Outside, someone yells, incoherently. It sounds like Thor.

In the quiet, she remembers. She allows herself a few seconds of silent crying, guilt and grief churning at the pit of her stomach, and then gets up. _She’s dead. She’s dead. For me._ Will they kill her, for causing it? Will Thor – how will Thor – staying here will not hide her.

The tramping of Asgardian boots interrupts her as she pushes the door open, and she freezes. Her legs don’t feel steady. Jane takes a deep breath, and hauls herself around the wall. In the main room, all is chaos; hangings have been torn down, furniture tossed to the ground, and the entire doorway has been eaten away. A troop of Asgardian soldiers are stationed around the walls, and Sif is casting her hands over the blue beam in the corner as the queen had done.

Frigga lies crumpled on the ground next to one of the columns, her green-gold dress bloodstained, and both Odin and Thor bent over her. Odin has his hands on the spreading patch of blood, and seems to be talking – the words sound strangely in Jane’s head – and Thor kneels a few inches from her, one hand hovering helplessly above hers. Both of them seem smaller, and one of the horns of Odin’s helmet is broken.

How long the tableau remains, she doesn’t know, but it is interrupted by the light footsteps of four healers and two guards. Jane recognises Eir, who runs straight to Frigga, pushing Odin aside, and bends over the bloodstain. Hope throbs at the back of her throat, but she is still crying; she rubs her face with the sleeve of the arm that is not holding her upright against the wall. As the healers gather around Frigga, Thor is gently but firmly nudged upright and out of the way, and even Odin moves back. The guards start to manoeuvere something that looks like a cross between a stretcher and a carriage across the ruined threshold.

Thor looks around, eyes glazed and wet, breath coming raggedly. At first, he doesn’t see her – then his eyes flicker back, and he is striding towards this side of the room, and Jane’s heart is pounding in her chest. She steps back without thinking. “Jane. Are you all right?”

“I’m – alive.” Cautiously she steps forward again. _Should I say thank you? No – that’s not right -_ “Because of – is your mother, I mean, will she…”

“I don’t know.” It sounds like he is struggling to speak. Sif stands up and puts a hand on his shoulder. “She lives, for now, but Eir says – we should not hope.” For a second he is silent, tears running freely.

 _What now? What now?_ She cannot even blame this paralysis on the Aether; it is silent, but it is as though there is a barrier between all she wants to convey, and her tongue.

Thor sniffs, and abruptly changes his stance. “Sif, will you do something for me?”

“Of course. Always.”

“Take Jane Foster into your household, under your protection.” When she nods, he turns back to Jane and says, his voice lowered, “You cannot go back to the lodge, it isn’t safe for you. There is nowhere in my household you will be safe. I do not – this was not your fault – I am sorry, Jane. Others will not think so. Sif can protect you from them.”

“I’ll go,” she says. “Thor, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry –”

He reaches for her as though to take her hand, and remembers just in time. For a moment they stare at each other. Sif says, “I think we had best hurry.”

“Sif will administer the oath, and you must swear it, even if it seems strange – it will only bind you as long as you remain in Asgard, and never against your will, I swear that –” Sif, too, gives her word “– but it is the best protection I can give you.”

“Right.”

“Doctor Jane Foster of Midgard, do you consent to join my household?”

“Yeah.”

The other two exchange glances, and Sif continues. Jane swears a barrage of oaths, including to remain true to her and her household through trial and travail, to obey lawful orders, to keep her secrets, and acknowledges herself a dependent of Konungadal; the clause, ‘for as long as I do remain, and no longer than is necessary, for the good of myself, of Asgard and the Nine Realms,’ is inserted, Thor witnesses it, and it is done.

They leave the room to the attentions of the servants who have begun swarming over it. Jane is shivering, her legs weak, and Sif takes her arm through the jacket. The contact is barely soothing; she wants nothing more than to dissolve onto a bed and howl, but she will not do that, not here, not now. Not when she is intruding on others’ grief – _if I had not…_

“I would… go to the healing rooms,” Thor says.

“Of course.” Sif’s throat feels knotted, and the burden of the news from the communications beam is dragging at her with her grief. “Thor…” The silence drags. She buys time. “I will do your blood muster, if you permit it.”

“Thank you.”

“It will be in the Dragonfang Hall; mine is in the Scarlet Gallery. And… I received the news over the beam. Fandral is dead.”

For a moment it seems as though he has not understood – Jane does, at her side, stifling a sound with her sleeve – and then he turns and swings a fist at the wall, stops it a breath from impact. Sif feels his near-silent roar of pain in the pit of her stomach.

“Where?” he says eventually.

“The throne room. Hogun saw him crash into the dark elf craft that went there, and First Legion found his body there, among their own soldiers, armed only with a dagger.”

“Where is Fourth’s blood muster?”

“I do not know. When I do, I will send a message to you.”

“Thank you,” he says, mechanically, still not turning around. “Excuse me.”

Sif watches him stride down the hall, shoulders drooping visibly even beneath the cape, and clamps down on her own urge to attack something. “Come. I will not take you to the blood muster, but I will not send you to my chambers alone. I will have Holma take care of you.” If she still lives.

By the time they reach Sif’s chambers, Jane is stumbling, her breath coming in hitching gasps. There had been a moment – a large set of moments – when rage had screamed up inside her against the mortal, but those moments are dead. Blame will solve nothing, and Jane – Jane is dying, too. She can feel it, even through the sleeve, faster the more griefs are piled on. But the universe will not die today, and nor will she.

As she leaves for the Scarlet Gallery, she looks out at the smoke-hazed sky. It is not yet noon.

-

Mother lies between them under three layers of protective magic, a monitor unit hanging over the bed, and Thor feels as though he is sitting under the weight of the entire realm. This hollow, heavy sensation is too familiar. He still cannot find the words to express it.

The silence drags on, and Thor says the only words he’s sure of. “I am sorry, Father.”

“It was not your fault. We all played our part – including your mother.” The words come slowly, as though Odin is struggling as he is to put an expression to it. After Loki – fell – they had barely spoken then, either, but it had felt like a silence of togetherness. Now, there is a distance – there are things that he does not say, for reasons he only comprehends some of. Odin looks ancient, frail, as though Thor collapsing on him would break him.

Eir had explained it carefully. The wound, from her own broken sword, had penetrated vital organs and disrupted the flow of two major energy channels. Already the flesh was mending, knit together by healing stone dust, but the energy channels… All is exacerbated by the degree of magical energy Frigga had pulled from her body and vented out into the Asgardian sky; when the blow had come, she had been already weakened. They can do nothing but wait and hope the art of the healers is enough.

Someone knocks on the door – a guard of First Legion. “My king.”

“Speak.”

If Thor would have done so, the chance is gone.

“Several parties have enquired as to whether the funeral tonight will be going ahead.”

Odin thinks a moment, his eyes shut. “I think we will have a respite; Malekith will not simply shrug off such a bolt of lightning as he was dealt. If the soldiers’ blood musters are done, we will go ahead with the military funeral, and hold those for non-military casualties until after the Convergence.”

“No, Father,” Thor says, heart hammering. His voice wavers. “Everyone who died today died by the spear. We should not separate them, not now; they all belong in Valhalla, and we must not keep any from their place there. I will – I will do blood muster for them, to make it right. We have the boats, especially if we send those who were close in one together.”

“Surely the people would rather the comfort of a familiar ritual.”

It takes gripping his leg, hard, not to break down in tears – will he never stop hurting people? “Then let them choose. The families. I just – it is right, for us to honour them, we should not make them wait and arrange it themselves –” He shuts his eyes, can’t continue. Silence falls.

“Very well,” Father says, and is that a note of pride in his voice? He gives the orders, and Thor starts trying to put himself together for yet another blood muster.

-

Loki had watched Volstagg’s men fight and kill their way back through the dungeons until the last of the freed prisoners were dead or recaptured, had felt the ground shake as the palace came under fire and watched the power in the complex flicker in the onslaught, and it had been satisfying. For all a part of him had been clawing at the walls desperate to join the chaos – though it was not specific about which side he would be joining – he had still had the glee of a chain reaction, of a tiny action that reverberated huge around him.

But by and by, quiet falls. The dungeons are abandoned, all the cells around him empty, and he is still here, his mind still itching at the inside of his skin.

A lone pair of footsteps breaks the silence, closer and closer – an Asgardian. He stands and waits, smirk at the ready. The man is of Second Legion, young and unsure of himself, and he stands a few steps back from the energy wall as Loki stares at him, waiting.

In a halting voice, he delivers the news from the surface. Loki nods, stiffly, a roaring starting in his ears, waits for him to get out of sight with every muscle held rigid – if he moves, he will scream, he will tear things, the illusion will fall – the footsteps fade. His face twists, hurt tearing up through his throat. There is no-one here to strike. Just impassive walls. Furniture. Everything secured for him by her – _I didn’t mean for –_

It builds and builds, scorching out from the pit of his stomach to his fingertips, and Loki lashes out.

-

From space, the Realm Eternal lies in shadow, and Gladsheim still bleeds the dust of disaster into the air. The relief response has been fast, the chaos mostly quelled, and now the city lies hushed and quiet, its people gathered about the ancient funeral terraces on the other side of the east cliffs, along the old river. Below them the boats have been laid out, the dead arrayed in any surviving finery and the symbols of their station; there are too many for the grottoes beneath the terrace, and many boats still lie on the launching ramps.

One by one, as the mourners slowly walk downstream with their cold-glowing globes clutched tight, the boats are released onto the tamed, quiescent river. Here is Fandral, his sword retrieved from the dark elf ship and laid upon his breast, his ship monster-prowed and the green of Fensalir draped upon the bier. For him Thor carries the globe, as his closest living and walking kin in Gladsheim. Behind him float the rest, guild masters and workers, country people, unguilded folk, warriors and children, bodies mangled or lying as though asleep. Kylfa’s wife Signy carries two globes, for her husband and her daughter, and she is not alone; other families lie afloat side by side, no kin to carry the globe for them, and so a master or a guard paces alongside. Eir carries for one of her healing women, killed with her father by a falling guntower as she visited him. Among the dead of this attack are the dead of the long war, their boats neater and less hastily prepared, but the destruction has made precedence hard to follow or even establish. The dead float among their comrades and loved ones rather than in strict hierarchies, and warrior families mingle with guildsfolk according to their connections.

Slowly the river broadens, and the paths close above it. At the procession’s head strides Odin, an older cloak flowing from his shoulders and a flimsy but unbroken ceremonial helmet on his head, and he leads the way to the long terraces overlooking the sea. Around him the great mass of people comes to rest, his own warriors, and around them the high Asgardian nobility, and so out across the three levels. Sif comes to a halt at the parapet of the highest, her household and Jane beside her.

The evening air is cold even in the thick dress of brown and gold Jane has been loaned, and the quiet hangs heavy in the air. There is no music that she can hear at this funeral, and few words, but all the same the feeling of shared grief spills out around her. At least she is not the only one who cannot keep up the stricken composure of the military mourners.

Below them the boats bob out into the sea, now all mixed together, and along the terraces men step forward with shortbows and torches. One by one the flaming arrows streak the sky, again and again until every boat burns. Jane tries not to think too hard about anything, but everything inside her cannot be ignored; her breath is coming in short gasps, tears flowing freely, and it is not the Aether that makes gravity feel so much stronger.

On they drift, out towards the rim, and she thinks there is singing but she does not understand. Amidst such a crowd, she stands alone, and though both Sif and Thor shoot her concerned glances they are too far away to reach for her.

The first of the boats reaches the rocks and continues out into the star-strewn void. Odin’s spear Gungnir, struck upon the ground, rings out into the night and the boat bursts into a spray of sparks. One after another, the boats sail out and dissolve into flecks of light that vanish into space, and now all around her people raise up their hands and release the globes.

Alone at the end of the Bifrost, Heimdall sits and watches, drinking the potion sent him from the healing room with the aftershocks of the shield-breaking still writing themselves in sparks across the dark inside his head. He should not still be here after such a failure, but no orders have come from anyone he need listen to and so he remains, ears straining into the abyss for any sign of the dark elf greatship. Amidst the chatter of ten trillion souls, there is only silence.

Back in the city, the injured join the half-felt song from the funeral. Heimdall stares out, the globes blurring as he loses them one by one among the stars, and rests his head on the side of his window.


End file.
